Videogames in class? All children love them: videogames. Exploring the worlds of Minecraft, growing crops and feeding the animals in Farming Simulator 15 or designing, building and managing your own zoo in Zoo Tycoon. The children love to play these games and what most people, especially parents, do not know is that many of these videogames are very instructive games. Is it not time to use these games in education? It is already 2017 and I believe it is time to involve more videogames in education. They are fun, effective and educational.
Today, so I experience, not many videogames are used in education. However researchers have found out that they are more effective to use than people expect. This is also the first reason to use these games. Even researchers from the British University of Hull are explaining scientific processes to children with the help of Minecraft. This is not very strange because Minecraft is a very general game. It has so many functions and opportunities, you can use it for almost every subject. Especially for mathematics and geography Minecraft can help. This is also the reason that Microsoft came with an educational edition of Minecraft. Many teachers have found out that children learn much better from games than from boring books.
Children enjoy learning and gaming. That is another reason why we should use more videogames. When children come home and the parents ask: "How was your day?", children usually respond with: "Boring..., same as always." This can be prevented by using videogames. From then on they will come home with the most creative stories about what they have learned, or which game they played. Is it not that what we want to hear from our children? That they enjoyed school!
You might wonder what children specifically learn from videogames. The main things that videogames teach are basic math skills, basic reading skills and social skills. When you are talking specifically about Minecraft, geography is something I learned more about while playing. It even helped me with my test in the 3rd grade of high school. It was a test about eco-systems and in Minecraft there are several biomes with characteristics which are based on the real world. For instance, in the Taiga biome it is cold and there are tall trees. Also spatial reasoning can be learned from Minecraft by decorating homes or building houses.
You might argue that children will lose attention to the teacher while playing games, but even this is already being taken care off. Game developers have already made and are still making ways to freeze the children in-game to let them focus on the teacher again. This ability can also be used to prevent children from destroying buildings in game or the teachers can teleport them to a different spot in the game. What is important, which is what many people forget, is that the game should be adapted enough to be used in class. You cannot just pick a game and let everyone play it without setting goals. It is important that certain things are being learned. In Minecraft it is necessary to implement modifications to let children for instance be dependent on eachother or to let the teacher have more authority in-game. So is it wise to use games in education? Yes. It is more effective, it is more fun and games are educational. Scandinavian countries are ahead of us so I do not think we should stay behind with our techonological abilities and be an example for the rest of the world to follow us and let games be more involved in the educational systems.